Biglawyers. Are any of you happy? Was this job better than others you've had? Forum

[krads153]

Most entry level programming gigs definitely do not start at 100k

We already went through this in this thread - the average starting salary is 66k for CS. However, if you work in the Bay Area, the average is higher. And frankly out of my undergrad (which admittedly has top ranked computer science and engineering programs), the average salary is 100k starting straight out of undergrad for CS. And most of these grads probably don't have any undergrad loans, or minimal.

The hours are also better in programming on average, and a lot of the bigger companies pay biglaw salaries or more plus equity.

[Anonymous User]

Most entry level programming gigs definitely do not start at 100k

We already went through this in this thread - the average starting salary is 66k for CS. However, if you work in the Bay Area, the average is higher. And frankly out of my undergrad (which admittedly has top ranked computer science and engineering programs), the average salary is 100k starting straight out of undergrad for CS. And most of these grads probably don't have any undergrad loans, or minimal.

The hours are also better in programming on average, and a lot of the bigger companies pay biglaw salaries or more plus equity.

This is the best job I've ever had. Even though being on a case with a crazy midlevel can mean you have to work 18 hours a day every day doing work nobody will ever read and leave you less than 100% certain that you won't be beaten, there are perks that make it better than any blue collar job. For one, you're indoors in a comfortable office with an endless supply of water.

Second, the odds of confronting violence are about 0% while there's always at least some chance you'll confront violence going from house to house or driving a cab. I think most taxi drivers have been knifed at least once, and regardless of which partner I present my work to, I know walking into their office that no matter how bad it goes, it's very unlikely she'll stab me. And even if she does stab me, I now have health insurance so it's the best of both worlds.

Third, in other jobs I've had, the boss might buy the workers a pie of pizza if they're working 12 hours on Christmas Eve. In big law, you can basically get a huge dinner every night you work 12 hours, and it doesn't have to be limited to 99/cent a slice pizza. There's also the money which is good, and the fact that the overwhelming majority of your peers are not ex-felons.

[krads153]

^Ok...except most people who do biglaw would probably just be working another office job in the first place, and not working with convicted felons. Also getting a free $20 meal after working 12 hours or whatever isn't a perk. It means you worked 12 hours in the office while most people with office jobs work 8 to 9 hours a day.

If your standards are comparing it to jobs with lots of convicted felons, then yes, biglaw is better than that.

[Anonymous User]

^Ok...except most people who do biglaw would probably just be working another office job in the first place, and not working with convicted felons. Also getting a free $20 meal after working 12 hours or whatever isn't a perk. It means you worked 12 hours in the office while most people with office jobs work 8 to 9 hours a day.

If your standards are comparing it to jobs with lots of convicted felons, then yes, biglaw is better than that.

It's more than $20 but even at $20, that's like getting paid $35 more for the day given the tax rate, and the 40 hour/week job for a good salary is kind of flame unless you majored in something useful at a good school, and most office jobs don't pay that well. There are areas of big law where you average 45 hours a week or less like T&E but they're very hard to get.

[krads153]

^Ok...except most people who do biglaw would probably just be working another office job in the first place, and not working with convicted felons. Also getting a free $20 meal after working 12 hours or whatever isn't a perk. It means you worked 12 hours in the office while most people with office jobs work 8 to 9 hours a day.

If your standards are comparing it to jobs with lots of convicted felons, then yes, biglaw is better than that.

It's more than $20 but even at $20, that's like getting paid $35 more for the day given the tax rate, and the 40 hour/week job for a good salary is kind of flame unless you majored in something useful at a good school, and most office jobs don't pay that well. There are areas of big law where you average 45 hours a week or less like T&E but they're very hard to get.

Right T&E has much better QOL on average. It's a good salary in flyover. It's not all that of a good salary in NYC or SF, so I guess it depends on where you live. 60k in flyover is worth like 200k in NYC or SF. We can agree to disagree though - all I know is that out of everyone I keep in touch with from college, they all make six figures (either in programming or CPA/CFA/finance) without going to grad school. i didn't major in a liberal arts though, so pretty much everyone in my major had a job straight out of college that paid okay starting. I guess maybe I'm speaking more to what I should have done in retrospect than the average person (but the average person shouldn't be going to law school anyway considering the average outcome).

[Anonymous User]

^Ok...except most people who do biglaw would probably just be working another office job in the first place, and not working with convicted felons. Also getting a free $20 meal after working 12 hours or whatever isn't a perk. It means you worked 12 hours in the office while most people with office jobs work 8 to 9 hours a day.

If your standards are comparing it to jobs with lots of convicted felons, then yes, biglaw is better than that.

It's more than $20 but even at $20, that's like getting paid $35 more for the day given the tax rate, and the 40 hour/week job for a good salary is kind of flame unless you majored in something useful at a good school, and most office jobs don't pay that well. There are areas of big law where you average 45 hours a week or less like T&E but they're very hard to get.

Right T&E has much better QOL on average. It's a good salary in flyover. It's not all that of a good salary in NYC or SF, so I guess it depends on where you live. 60k in flyover is worth like 200k in NYC or SF. We can agree to disagree though - all I know is that out of everyone I keep in touch with from college, they all make six figures (either in programming or CPA/CFA/finance) without going to grad school. i didn't major in a liberal arts though, so pretty much everyone in my major had a job straight out of college that paid okay starting. I guess maybe I'm speaking more to what I should have done in retrospect than the average person (but the average person shouldn't be going to law school anyway considering the average outcome).

Well it sounds like you (1) majored in something useful (2) at a good school. I was actually surprised at my t-14 by how good other law student's social skills and professional demeanor was in comparison to white collar people I knew in college given the stereotypes about lawyers. My experience was that some people make much more money in law than they would outside of it, and that the ones who struck out make much less. I didn't really perceive a "breaking even."

I think one thing that doesn't get said very often is that big law firms have a lot of really smart people. The average person is nice but very stupid and very boring once the charm of meeting a new person wears off. For much of my life I was the smartest person in the room and was bored. In big law I'm not dumb but never the smartest in the room, and constantly have my horizon expanded regardless of the conversation. Like any social structure, a disproportionate amount of sociopaths rise to the top but most of the partners are legitimately decent people with fascinating things to say.

[A. Nony Mouse]

^Ok...except most people who do biglaw would probably just be working another office job in the first place, and not working with convicted felons. Also getting a free $20 meal after working 12 hours or whatever isn't a perk. It means you worked 12 hours in the office while most people with office jobs work 8 to 9 hours a day.

If your standards are comparing it to jobs with lots of convicted felons, then yes, biglaw is better than that.

This exactly. I never get why people say biglaw is great because it isn't coal mining or a job where you risk getting stabbed or even just blue collar jobs generally. Hey, I don't know what you're complaining about biglaw for, you're not getting black lung!

Also lol at the idea that you need to go to biglaw to hang out with smart people.

[deepseapartners]

^Ok...except most people who do biglaw would probably just be working another office job in the first place, and not working with convicted felons. Also getting a free $20 meal after working 12 hours or whatever isn't a perk. It means you worked 12 hours in the office while most people with office jobs work 8 to 9 hours a day.

If your standards are comparing it to jobs with lots of convicted felons, then yes, biglaw is better than that.

This exactly. I never get why people say biglaw is great because it isn't coal mining or a job where you risk getting stabbed or even just blue collar jobs generally. Hey, I don't know what you're complaining about biglaw for, you're not getting black lung!

Also lol at the idea that you need to go to biglaw to hang out with smart people.

The allure of Biglaw for me is that I can make enough money to (a) never have to go back to fucksville, u.s.a. again, despite having missed out on the other client-facing, soul-crushing jobs for young people from top universities the first go-around, and (b) actually support myself and my wife while she goes to med school.

[ballouttacontrol]

Most entry level programming gigs definitely do not start at 100k

We already went through this in this thread - the average starting salary is 66k for CS. However, if you work in the Bay Area, the average is higher. And frankly out of my undergrad (which admittedly has top ranked computer science and engineering programs), the average salary is 100k starting straight out of undergrad for CS. And most of these grads probably don't have any undergrad loans, or minimal.

The hours are also better in programming on average, and a lot of the bigger companies pay biglaw salaries or more plus equity.

Fine. How about: most entry level programming jobs do not start at at 100k in the Bay Area.

Even fuckin Google last I heard starts at $100k on the dot and that is definitely not your average straight out of UG kid, they do the majority of their hiring from SWEs that have experience leading a team. An average grad is a 3.0 CS student out of Chico State who will be happy if he can land something paying $60-70k and offering good experience

[Abbie Doobie]

JFC mods can we just get a CS subforum for all these "just do programmer" debates/spergs??

[Anonymous User]

^Ok...except most people who do biglaw would probably just be working another office job in the first place, and not working with convicted felons. Also getting a free $20 meal after working 12 hours or whatever isn't a perk. It means you worked 12 hours in the office while most people with office jobs work 8 to 9 hours a day.

If your standards are comparing it to jobs with lots of convicted felons, then yes, biglaw is better than that.

This exactly. I never get why people say biglaw is great because it isn't coal mining or a job where you risk getting stabbed or even just blue collar jobs generally. Hey, I don't know what you're complaining about biglaw for, you're not getting black lung!

Also lol at the idea that you need to go to biglaw to hang out with smart people.

I didn't say you have to. There are people much smarter than lawyers but those jobs aren't available to most fine arts majors.

I also think that if you're working 40 hours a week or more the people become more important than the work. Most law students don't realize this. I've noticed the quality of my work changes based on the team I'm on. If you're on a team with people you like it's not that bad staying late. You also try harder than you would if you were working alone, because you want to make your coworkers' lives a little easier because you start to care about them. If you're on a team with an asshole tyrant then it's torture, and you find yourself acting like Paul Newman in Cool Hand Luke, looking for ways to subtlety stick it to the man.

[Alive97]

Love my job. Work with people I like, doing shit that interests me, and work the same amount of hours as my peers pulling down similar salaries in other fields? I didn't start in law until late but sometimes I think the rest of you complainers about big law are just kids who never had a real job before - and I don't mean bagging groceries, I mean the kind of job where if you quit your kid is screwed. Trying working in some shitty corporate under a shitty boss knowing that if you bail, your family is screwed. Tyrannical senior associate will seem like a breath of fresh air after that.

I hate this line of argument, because it's regularly been debunked (in that plenty of the people here who dislike biglaw have had other jobs). Besides, if you don't get the "work with people I like" part, you're not going to like any job, and some people get screwed in that department. I'm sure there are some people who hate it because they're K-JD and don't know what a real professional job is like, but I don't think that's the only reason someone can dislike biglaw.

I've seen those posts, and most of those people have had other jobs that were lower stakes. Comparing a big law job to some $70K timestamp gig is apples and oranges - they don't expect you to do anything, you don't stress about anything, they don't pay you anything. I made $300K+ after bonus last year. Find me a job that pays in the ballpark that is meaningfully better than law, I'm all ears. But most of my friends who have gone inhouse to jobs that werent total step-off-the-track gigs have found it no less stressful or intrusive than biglaw, and many of my college friends who are now mid career finance folks or doctors with real practices have the same gripes as we do.

Stipulated: if you're smart and competent enough to handle a job that pays $300K, and you take a job that pays $125K, that job will seem comparatively easy and simpatico. That's not because biglaw jobs suck, it's because doing easy work is easy. Which is not to say that stepping off the train for the low paying job is a bad idea, if you don't need or want the money.

But truly, I stand by previous post: nothing is worse than a bad boss in a corporate where you have a single boss who works with you exclusively and has sole hiring/firing authority over you. Just by dint of working with multiple people, a bad job at a firm will never be as bad as the worst job at a corporate.

One thing a thread like this does reveal is that lots of people in biglaw are motivated almost entirely by money...and not in a "only because I need to pay off loans" kind of way lol. I don't think anyone can deny this guy really enjoyed saying "I made $300K+ after bonus last year". I'm not shocked he posted anonymously. Literally people are choosing careers (and grad school) by comparing salaries and simply shooting for the highest.

Let's not kid ourselves that lots of people are after that $160k. Which probably is something to consider.

[JusticeJackson]

.

[los blancos]

Lol, just fucking lol, at this:

Stipulated: if you're smart and competent enough to handle a job that pays $300K, and you take a job that pays $125K, that job will seem comparatively easy and simpatico. That's not because biglaw jobs suck, it's because doing easy work is easy.

I, for one, am surprised to learn that bros doing work for the SEC like their jobs because they just have it so much easier. After all, MAKING SURE COMMAS ARE IN THE RIGHT PLACE as a biglaw midlevel IS JUST SO HARD by comparison.

[Cogburn87]

^Ok...except most people who do biglaw would probably just be working another office job in the first place, and not working with convicted felons. Also getting a free $20 meal after working 12 hours or whatever isn't a perk. It means you worked 12 hours in the office while most people with office jobs work 8 to 9 hours a day.

If your standards are comparing it to jobs with lots of convicted felons, then yes, biglaw is better than that.

This exactly. I never get why people say biglaw is great because it isn't coal mining or a job where you risk getting stabbed or even just blue collar jobs generally. Hey, I don't know what you're complaining about biglaw for, you're not getting black lung!

Also lol at the idea that you need to go to biglaw to hang out with smart people.

But it's better than being a child soldier in Mali!

[candidlatke]

mods feel free to delete this if i'm overstepping as a 0L but purely chiming in on the CS debacle,

as someone who was/is a CS major in undergrad and who's been through recruiting and had summer gigs, it's definitely not as rosy as you guys make it out to be.

the 100k entry jobs are pretty unicorn, generally reserved for the stanfy/princeton/top UG people that excel

for the big names like apple/google/facebook/microsoft/amazon/etc., you're looking at 35/hour or around 70k salary typically and these positions still take either connections or you to actually be really good.
mind you, you're competing with people from better schools and the lunatics who have been coding since they were like 12 or some shit

more common is working for some random firm like in insurance/etc. being an IT/QA/Dev grunt where you're getting paid anywhere between 10-20 an hour

coming out of a mid-tier UC think UCSD/UCD/UCSB/UCI which for you prestige whores are placed reasonably well on the USNWR rankings, i can think of less than 10 people in my class who placed into the big name firms

by and far the majority of people don't know what they're doing and are either still looking for full time work or are at some run of the mill place

furthermore, even after landing a decent gig, you still have to enjoy it.
the $35/hour entry salary isn't shit when you're in the bay area and you'll be hard pressed to find matching salaries in better cost of living places.

the work, like i imagine big-law, is entirely dependent on your preferences but i personally hated it.
i was lucky enough to land one of the big names for a summer in seattle but i ultimately ended up passing on it to study for the lsat because i really couldn't see myself as a perpetual codemonkey.

there's other jobs that are more fun in tech like business analysts and project managers but most of the recruiting at the non-top tier schools is done purely for the code monkey jobs that are more mechanical in nature.
and remember that even for the pure engineering/devwork jobs at the top firms there's ridiculous competition especially among the non-targets

[orangecup]

Programming does sound mind-numbing, but one of my friends is doing a support role at Microsoft (it's not even a very technical position) and he makes ~75k a year and works 35 hours a week. He just got an offer in the Bay Area to do similar work for $115k w/ 10% bonus and equity. He said people in their mid-late 20s are making 155k at Microsoft doing dev work.

[Anonymous User]

First year associate, and happy so far. This board does a good job of listing the good and bad things, but they're a bit exaggerated on both ends (how boring the work it is, and how good the money is). The money is good partly because most legal salaries are terrible. The hours are bad but that's partly because there are a lot of hours with nothing to do.

[84651846190]

It is what it is. You really have to be in it to understand it. No one can really explain how it's going to be for you (whether positive or negative). I was surprised to find that there are people with (1) no plan to have a family, (2) no desire to maintain social lives, and (3) an earnest desire to strive forever and ever. For these people, biglaw is a blast. For people like me, it's not. TBH, I didn't really know I fell into the latter category as much as I do until I actually worked in biglaw for a while.

[dabigchina]

Most entry level programming gigs definitely do not start at 100k

We already went through this in this thread - the average starting salary is 66k for CS. However, if you work in the Bay Area, the average is higher. And frankly out of my undergrad (which admittedly has top ranked computer science and engineering programs), the average salary is 100k starting straight out of undergrad for CS. And most of these grads probably don't have any undergrad loans, or minimal.

Yeah law isn't great but let's not get ahead of ourselves here. Most of the coders i know in the bay aread start at around 70-85. Sure there are people who start at google and facebook in the 120 range, but those people are fucking smart.

Let's be real here, if any of us were smart enough to be a coder at facebook/google, we would probably go out and make it happen instead of bitching here. Hell, if any of us were smart enough to make it through a CS major in undergrad, we prob would have rolled with that.*

*Sincerest apologies to anybody who was an engineer pre LS, you probably should have stuck with that.

[Abbie Doobie]

It is what it is. You really have to be in it to understand it. No one can really explain how it's going to be for you (whether positive or negative). I was surprised to find that there are people with (1) no plan to have a family, (2) no desire to maintain social lives, and (3) an earnest desire to strive forever and ever. For these people, biglaw is a blast. For people like me, it's not. TBH, I didn't really know I fell into the latter category as much as I do until I actually worked in biglaw for a while.

which is why it is important to reiterate this:

Your experience will depend on who you work with. Some firms are tolerable. Some are unbearable.

seriously, this can many times be dispositive of your biglaw experience.

case in point, i started out at a firm in a small and relatively unknown practice group and had a great experience. really enjoyed the clients we worked with and i got a lot of attention and feedback/mentoring from the partners in the group. the partners and a lot of the associates had families and respected everyone's time because of it.

well, an opportunity came up to join another firm with large and prestigious practice group and now i'm regretting my decision. at the time, i figured i would get better exposure to more diverse types of tasks, better access to the best partners in the field, and i would get to work with some pretty well known clients. turns out, since the practice group is huge, there is a lot of inter-associate competition for the best tasks and partner attention. the best tasks typically go to those who are best at kissing ass and have time to do all the "firm citizenship" bullshit. and many of the partners tend to be out to lunch with the feedback and mentorship, and honestly, i don't think they are any better at the practice than the partners at my previous firm.

[Abbie Doobie]

*Sincerest apologies to anybody who was an engineer pre LS, you probably should have stuck with that.

i switched from being an engineer to being a patent agent w/ 0 prior experience during law school and started a salary ~50% above my highest engineering salary. as an associate, i've more than doubled my engineering salary. notwithstanding some issues with my current firm, i'm pretty happy with the switch.

[Cogburn87]

Hell, if any of us were smart enough to make it through a CS major in undergrad, we prob would have rolled with that.

You are greatly exaggerating the difficulty of undergraduate computer science courses.

[whysoseriousbiglaw]

mods feel free to delete this if i'm overstepping as a 0L but purely chiming in on the CS debacle,

as someone who was/is a CS major in undergrad and who's been through recruiting and had summer gigs, it's definitely not as rosy as you guys make it out to be.

the 100k entry jobs are pretty unicorn, generally reserved for the stanfy/princeton/top UG people that excel

for the big names like apple/google/facebook/microsoft/amazon/etc., you're looking at 35/hour or around 70k salary typically and these positions still take either connections or you to actually be really good.
mind you, you're competing with people from better schools and the lunatics who have been coding since they were like 12 or some shit

more common is working for some random firm like in insurance/etc. being an IT/QA/Dev grunt where you're getting paid anywhere between 10-20 an hour

coming out of a mid-tier UC think UCSD/UCD/UCSB/UCI which for you prestige whores are placed reasonably well on the USNWR rankings, i can think of less than 10 people in my class who placed into the big name firms

According to this the top 3 schools for computer science starting salary pay are Stanford (90k), Berkeley (82k) and MIT (82k) (and also Carnegie Mellon, Cornell, etc.). No where does it even mention Princeton, and a bunch of random schools are also listed. UCSD's also in the top (average of 70k).

http://www.ics.uci.edu/community/news/a ... cle?id=299

[ballouttacontrol]

mods feel free to delete this if i'm overstepping as a 0L but purely chiming in on the CS debacle,

as someone who was/is a CS major in undergrad and who's been through recruiting and had summer gigs, it's definitely not as rosy as you guys make it out to be.

the 100k entry jobs are pretty unicorn, generally reserved for the stanfy/princeton/top UG people that excel

for the big names like apple/google/facebook/microsoft/amazon/etc., you're looking at 35/hour or around 70k salary typically and these positions still take either connections or you to actually be really good.
mind you, you're competing with people from better schools and the lunatics who have been coding since they were like 12 or some shit

more common is working for some random firm like in insurance/etc. being an IT/QA/Dev grunt where you're getting paid anywhere between 10-20 an hour

coming out of a mid-tier UC think UCSD/UCD/UCSB/UCI which for you prestige whores are placed reasonably well on the USNWR rankings, i can think of less than 10 people in my class who placed into the big name firms

According to this the top 3 schools for computer science starting salary pay are Stanford (90k), Berkeley (82k) and MIT (82k) (and also Carnegie Mellon, Cornell, etc.). No where does it even mention Princeton, and a bunch of random schools are also listed. UCSD's also in the top (average of 70k).

http://www.ics.uci.edu/community/news/a ... cle?id=299

And its source: Payscale.com
lmfao @ UCBSB > Stanford = UCI

*Sincerest apologies to anybody who was an engineer pre LS, you probably should have stuck with that.

i switched from being an engineer to being a patent agent w/ 0 prior experience during law school and started a salary ~50% above my highest engineering salary. as an associate, i've more than doubled my engineering salary. notwithstanding some issues with my current firm, i'm pretty happy with the switch.

Ditto pretty much for switching to patent law. Also the upside as a lawyer is way way higher unless u transition into a business side management role. Even then law upside probably higher.